The Hunter artist's new framing business, however, is out of the box.

Based at The Creator Incubator in Hamilton North, The Mad Framer recycles timber that Campbell collects from kerbs, the tip and just about anywhere.

"Artists here look out for me, it's like Christmas most days, today I arrived and found a huge frame that was damaged but has so much potential," she says. "At council pickups there is so much good stuff being chucked and it gets crushed and put into landfill and people don't care, they just want the next thing. But some people like the idea of repurposing and knowing [a frame] comes from an easel, a bed base, old windows or fence palings."

Raised in Lake Macquarie, Campbell has supported herself as an artist since graduating from art school. She travelled abroad and returned to Sydney, picking up her framing apprenticeship.

LYNDAL Campbell is a classically trained framer, having been an apprentice to a specialist craftsman in Surry Hills in the mid '90s.

The Hunter artist's new framing business, however, is out of the box.

Based at The Creator Incubator in Hamilton North, The Mad Framer recycles timber that Campbell collects from kerbs, the tip and just about anywhere.

"Artists here look out for me, it's like Christmas most days, today I arrived and found a huge frame that was damaged but has so much potential," she says. "At council pickups there is so much good stuff being chucked and it gets crushed and put into landfill and people don't care, they just want the next thing. But some people like the idea of repurposing and knowing [a frame] comes from an easel, a bed base, old windows or fence palings."

Raised in Lake Macquarie, Campbell has supported herself as an artist since graduating from art school. She travelled abroad and returned to Sydney, picking up her framing apprenticeship.

Inspired by a warehouse gallery she saw in Brighton, she and an acquaintance opened a gallery with a framing arm in Strawberry Hills.

In 2011, Campbell returned to the Hunter to create her own "figurative, whimsical, partly abstract" art.

She paints at night and frames by day, the process of repurposing the timber being more labour intensive.

"With normal framing you just order material in, cut it to size and it's got the rebate and stain but when you are doing it yourself you have to do it all. You might get a beautiful piece of timber then you have to saw it to size, put the rebate in, sand and stain it," she says.

Campbell makes frames for a range of clients and artists including Bridie Watt. It is a joyful, intense process.

"It is a joy to be recycling something that is broken and then turning it into something that looks really beautiful around an art work," Campbell says.

"It can be stressful because you are working with original art works so you have to be really careful, but the beautiful thing is when you make something from nothing and the client sees it and is happy - that is the best part."

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